Living in Harmony (Temples)

Credit Line: Gift of Ian Holliday 2023, Collection of SMU

This artwork is part of 25x25 Campus Art Tour.

Listen to the audio description of the artwork here.

Transcript:

The artist Ba Khine uses repeating horizontal lines as well as soft calming colours to illustrate the bucolic village life. In this peaceful scene, people are traveling in bullock carts to the religious Ananda Pagoda Festival in Bagan where they will set up encampments around the temple. In the background, to the distance, we see the ancient temples, pagodas and monasteries that dot the Bagan plains.

The artist says about this painting:

"I painted a group of people going to the Ananda Pagoda Festival in Bagan… We Bamar travel in groups for pagoda festivals. In the villages, they use bullock carts. This subject had been in my heart for a long time, so I painted it. In Myanmar, such scenes are quite common. You find them in Bagan today. In rural towns, they still travel by bullock cart, although people have started to use motorcycles. They've replaced the wooden wheels of bullock carts with car tyres to make life easier for the oxen."

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Ba Khine uses repeating horizontal lines and soft calming colours to illustrate the bucolic village life. In this peaceful scene, people are traveling in bullock carts to the Ananda Pagoda festival in Bagan, whose plains are dotted with ancient temples, pagodas and monasteries.

Before becoming a self-taught painter, Ba Khine (b. 1960, Meikthila, Mandalay Region, Myanmar) worked as a photographer for the tourist trade. He has been a full-time artist since 1996, and has exhibited overseas since 2006. He is one of five artists working collectively at Studio Square Gallery in Yangon.

The SMU Art Collection has over 300 paintings from Myanmar donated by Ian Holliday. A specialist in Burmese politics, Holliday assembled the Thukhuma Collection which comprises of Burmese paintings largely dating from the transitional decade of the 2010s, presenting multiple artistic perspectives on a society in reform. On display at School of Social Sciences and Li Ka Shing Library, the gifted paintings depict the people, culture and land, from the streets of Yangon and rural peripheries to political icons and indigenous deities.